Economic Watch COLLEGE ATHLETES SHOULD GET PAID WHAT THEY'RE WORTH
GARY S. BECKER

09/30/1985
Business Week
Pg. 18
Copyright 1985 McGraw-Hill, Inc.

In the spring a young man's fancy may turn to love, but in the fall it almost surely turns to football. Inevitably, though, his daydreams of the spirited competition of the college football season are marred by public accusations that some schools have disobeyed the rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. that govern payments made to athletes.

In 1984 the U. S. Supreme Court held that the NCAA violated antitrust laws with its restrictions on televising the football games of member institutions. Certainly, that was a monopoly, but at least college football faces a lot of competition for audiences--both on TV and in the stadium. The NCAA's real monopoly power is over its athletes.

This is why the association's rules on payments to college athletes are a more serious restraint of trade than were its restrictions on televising football games. The NCAA limits not only the number and size of athletic scholarships but also such matters as compensation to athletes for summer employment, when colleges can approach high school players, and when transfer students from other colleges are eligible to play. These rules are designed mainly to reduce the competition among colleges for players in football and basketball--the two top revenue-producing college sports.

An association of companies that limits payments to employees and punishes violators would usually be considered a labor-market cartel. Why should the restrictions on competition for athletes among the approximately 800 members of the NCAA be any different? And especially since these restrictions primarily affect the low-income athletes--most of whom are black or from other minorities--who dominate big-time college football and basketball. LOWER SALARIES. One answer is that some institutions would have to drop football and other sports if they were forced to pay market prices for athletes. Clearly, the same argument would justify lower salaries and increased teaching loads for professors to ensure the survival of many academic programs.

But programs should not be saved through artificially low wages to athletes, professors, or anybody else for that matter. Why should the viability of athletic programs depend on what amounts to subsidies from athletes rather than on such resources as larger gifts from alumni, higher tuition from students, bigger subsidies from taxpayers, or higher ticket prices for spectators?

A second argument used to defend the NCAA is that athletes should choose a college for its educational quality rather than for what it will pay them to play. Presumably scholarships awarded to students for academic achievement, as well as the salaries paid to faculty and even college presidents, should also be kept low and uniform so that these people choose colleges on the basis of academic quality rather than monetary rewards. It is presumptuous to argue that college athletes are less capable than other students to choose the particular mix of monetary compensation and educational quality that best suits their talents and interests. Nor should college athletes be held to a higher standard than are other members of academia. BIG-TIME PROGRAMS. Such an argument also suggests that a lot of effort is devoted to the education of athletes. Although some colleges do have excellent records in this area, many with big-time athletic programs do not seem concerned about the education their athletes receive. Indeed, less than one-third of the athletes in revenue-producing sports graduate from college, according to Richard E. Lapchick of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

In his dissent from the 1984 decision on the televising of college football, Justice Byron R. White--himself a former college athlete--claimed that competition for college athletes should be limited to preserve the amateur nature of college sports. But why should all college athletes be amateurs? Currently the Ivy League has tougher academic standards for athletes than most Division I schools--universities with big sports programs. The University of Chicago is a member of a conference that essentially prohibits athletic scholarships altogether. Open competition for college athletes would only slightly affect these schools and the many others that actually use amateur athletes.

Open competition would widen the range of college athletic programs and would permit schools to be honest when they use professional athletes--who may also be students. Many schools, in fact, already use professionals. They often violate either the letter or the intent of the NCAA rules through such practices as gifts to parents, providing athletes with well-paying jobs that require little work, and pressuring teachers to give athletes passing grades.

The NCAA's efforts to justify its restrictions on competition for athletes should be viewed with suspicion because they increase the financial benefits colleges receive from football, basketball, and other sports. I would have expected greater hostility from Congress and the courts to a policy that lowers the earnings of young black and other athletes with limited opportunities.